The Good Wife recap: 'Parallel Construction, Bitches'

The Good Wife has been on a much-too-long eight-week hiatus. But thankfully, Alicia Florrick & Co. are back in our Sunday night lives. So let’s dive right in to “Parallel Construction, Bitches.” The episode opened up at Alicia’s apartment while she and Grace watched the fake AMC show Darkness At Noon. (Sample dialogue: “There are lines, and then there are lines!”) But their TV viewing was interrupted by Charles Lester (returning guest star Wallace Shawn). As you’ll recall, Mr. Lester is Lemond Bishop’s personal “spokesman” and all-around shady guy. Anyway, Mr. Lester told Alicia they had a Lemond Bishop problem. Of course! Because when Lemond Bishop’s around, there’s usually a problem.

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Bishop had been accused of moving drugs at one of his properties, and the DEA had a witness willing to testify that she saw the illegal activity in question. So off to court they went, with Lockhart/Gardner on hand to represent Bishop’s legitimate businesses. Judge Kluger (Jeffrey Tambor) was presiding and Frank Asher (guest star Jack Davenport) was heading up the prosecution. [Ed. note: It’s pretty weird to hear Jack Davenport’s American accent. I’d rather him stick to his true British form. And yes, I’m choosing to ignore Smash like most of America did.] Asher believed he could easily establish probable cause with the aforementioned testimony from the witness, Angela Moretti (Kim Director).

But it’s Will Gardner to the rescue! He called Howard Lyman to the stand. Based on our previous encounters with Howard Lyman, you would have thought this would be a total disaster. But fortunately, Lyman had proof that he was with Ms. Moretti during the time of the alleged drug transport. The DEA quickly amended their story to say that Bishop was moving product the day before. Kluger wasn’t too pleased with the DEA’s flip-flopping: “You can’t do this. You tell a story, and you stick to it.”

Speaking of Judge Kluger, earlier this season he called Alicia and asked her to lunch. And in this episode, the two were going to follow through with their outing. Apparently, Kluger just wanted to talk to Alicia about a book he was writing about lawyers. But now that he was overseeing the case of the week, Alicia wondered if she should cancel. Cary convinced her to keep the meeting. And it was as weird as you would expect: Alicia was running late from a meeting with Mr. Lester, and Kluger seemed miffed by her tardiness. He told her another judge just called him, and promptly left. When Alicia tried to reschedule at the end of the episode, he told her he decided not to write the book. But he is learning Mandarin! What’s his deal?

Anyway, back to Lemond Bishop’s case: Mr. Lester and Lemond Bishop came to Alicia to tell her there was no way the witness could have seen him moving product a day earlier because he was, in fact, moving drugs on the original day. So the witness couldn’t have seen it, but that meant the DEA knew about the drugs from another, unusable source. Lester assumed it had to be a confidential informant, and then accused Florrick/Agos of leaking the information to the prosecution.

NEXT: The leak is not who you think….

Alicia had the uncomfortable task of questioning Clarke Hayden, Cary, and Robyn about the information they might have shared. But Alicia was confident that none of them could be responsible for the leak. No closer to an answer, Mr. Lester left and told Alicia she needed to be on call at 3 p.m. the next day since Bishop had to deliver something to O’Hare Airport.

As it turns out, the mystery delivery to the airport was just a ploy to figure out who the leak was. Bishop and Lester were pulled over for a routine traffic stop en route to O’Hare. But it wasn’t all that routine since DEA Agent Lee Cheswick (Matthew Rauch) was in tow. Unfortunately, Bishop had more than 900 grams of cocaine in his trunk. But wait a second, Cheswick! That’s not cocaine. It’s just regular pancake mix. (On a related note, I’m now craving chocolate chip pancakes.)

Anyway, Lester and Bishop’s plan worked. They told Alicia, Cary, Robyn, and Clarke Hayden four different delivery times so when their vehicle was predictably pulled over, they’d know who the leak was. And in an odd turn of events, it appeared as though Alicia was responsible for spilling the beans. But we know that she wouldn’t do that. That led them to believe that their phones were being tapped. And they are. But not by the DEA like they assumed. It’s the NSA! And we’ve come full circle, here.

Lemond Bishop arranged to get Florrick/Agos some burner phones to stop the DEA from listening in. But we know that it’s much bigger than that. So the burner phones didn’t do much good. But Florrick/Agos thought they were getting ahead of the prosecution on Lemond’s case. Cary recommended they get a preservation order. And while it was a great idea, Judge Kluger shot down their request in court. Assuming that the wire tapping was about Lemond Bishop, Cary and Alicia decided to go ahead and tell Will and Diane that they were probably being tapped as well. Unsurprisingly, Diane and Will were skeptical of this information and asked Kalinda to get the truth out of Cary.

But again, none of our Good Wife lawyers really know that this wire tapping business is much bigger than Lemond Bishop. Tobias Segal reprised his role as NSA employee Tyler Hopkins, and this time he was joined by Maulik Pancholy (30 Rock) who played Dev Jain. They continued to listen in — burner phones and all — and realized that Alicia & Co. knew that they were under surveillance. Tyler and Dev alerted the powers that be at the NSA.

NEXT: Eli and Marilyn don’t see eye to eye….

Cheswick claimed he didn’t do anything wrong, but the DEA’s slip-up obviously endangered the NSA warrant. Apparently, the NSA is encouraged to share its findings with other departments. So the DEA was using information gleaned from the NSA taps to take down Lemond Bishop. Oh, the tangled webs we weave. The NSA cut Cheswick off from using any more of the taps.

That didn’t keep Lemond Bishop’s case from going to trial. But there was even more drama there: Frank Asher resigned mid-trial due to an “interoffice matter.” AUSA Victoria Alvarez (Rosie Benton) was there to replace him, effective immediately. That obviously set off red flags for Florrick/Agos. They looked into Asher’s resignation, but didn’t have much luck on that investigation front. So Lester put Asher on the stand in Bishop’s case to ask about the active wire tap. And unsurprisingly, Asher decided to plead the Fifth.

That got Cary’s wheels turning: He remembered an article he read about the NSA. The NSA is allowed to hand tips from their investigations off to other departments, including the DEA. The DEA can’t use classified information to build a case, so it creates a new evidence trail. And thus, the parallel construction. (Hey there, episode title!) So now they know that the NSA is involved, but they still don’t know who the NSA is after. In the end, all the issues with the prosecution worked in Lemond Bishop’s favor. The case was dropped, and back he goes to his usual illegal activities.

Meanwhile, Eli and Marilyn were still in a battle of wills about the potential voter fraud scandal. Marilyn stood by her decision to file a less-than-conclusive report. And Eli kept pressuring her to amend her report to reflect more positively on Peter. But this argument became moot when an unmarked black van showed up in front of Marilyn. Nelson Dubek (Eric Bogosian), an agent with the Office of Public Integrity, wanted Marilyn to aid in their investigation of voter fraud against Peter. She was obviously reluctant to help, but Nelson brought out the big guns and threatened her with jail time.

Marilyn and Eli continued to fight about her report, so it was no great shock when she met Nelson and gave him a copy of the now-infamous stuffed ballot box video. We already knew this voter fraud scandal wasn’t going to get pushed under the rug. But things just got a lot more complicated. And the complications continued when Nelson went to light a fire under Alicia. He said he was there to give her a chance to get ahead of the situation, but Alicia was her usual badass self. Alicia sent Nelson on his merry way without helping him. But she did worry enough to alert Eli of Nelson’s appearance, who then realized that Marilyn had probably tipped him off. And who’s at the root of all this evil? Will Gardner, of course. He can hurt Peter if he wants, but as long as the Feds don’t know about his involvement, everyone’s good.

NEXT: Cary and Kalinda share an intimate moment….

So now’s probably not the time to let Eli and Alicia know that they just gave the Feds exactly what they need. With the NSA listening in at all times — and passing that information on to other departments — the Feds know Will is the key to this voter fraud case. Nelson Dubek decided to pay a little visit to Mr. Gardner. But despite Will’s obvious issues with Peter, he stood firm against Nelson. He just kept repeating that he was bound by attorney/client privilege. Nelson even offered Will a grant of transactional immunity if he would agree to cooperate fully. But no dice. Will wasn’t intimated and ended up with a subpoena. And the plot thickens!

But I’ve been saving the best for last: There’s been a lot of speculation about Cary and Kalinda’s relationship. Early in the episode, they were out drinking, but there was clearly some animosity between the two. “You want to get me to talk, you just say talk. Don’t play games,” Kalinda warned Cary. So color me surprised to find them in bed together just a few scenes later! (My reaction can be summed up in this one gif.) The writers have alluded to a sexual relationship between Cary and Kalinda, but we’ve never actually seen it on-screen. And since I’m a big-time Cary/Kalinda shipper, I was really pleased with this development. But leave it to Kalinda and Cary to talk shop instead of talking dirty. Kalinda used their between-the-sheets time to determine whether or not Cary was telling the truth about the Lockhart/Gardner wire tapping. He told her he was telling the truth. But Kalinda immediately went back to Diane and said he was lying. I’m glad these two seem to have a, um, healthy relationship.

Memorable lines and moments from “Parallel Construction, Bitches”:

++ Alicia telling Zach to give Charles Lester the laundry bag, not realizing who was actually at the front door

++ Alicia, to Cary after he shares his idea about a preservation order: “That was…almost Will-like.”

Cary: “Thank you, Diane!”

++ Tyler and Dev discussing whether or not Will and Diane are sexually attracted to each other based on their phone surveillance

++ “Okay. I think this will make sense if I get more wine.” —Alicia, talking about Darkness At Noon

One thing I particularly enjoyed about this episode was the lack of contention between Florrick/Agos and Lockhart/Gardner. So much of this season has been about them battling each other. So I liked that the LG lawyers had to take more of a backseat role in this episode. What do you think will happen with this NSA situation? If they’re listening in on conversations, might this come up again with future cases? What did you think of the episode as a whole? And do you like Cary and Kalinda together? Sound off with all your thoughts in the comments.